Becoming a Better Structural Engineer 1

Boy, are you in the right place.

Most of what I've learned (including during school, and including studying for exams), I've learned right here... reading posts on relevant topics and creating discussions when something unique or puzzling came up.

Spend some time here, do some light reading (the best text recommendations have also come from here). Studying for the SE has also been good to me, opened my eyes to some stuff I don't deal with (unfortunately also exposed me to bridges).

• For me personally nothing has improved my skills more than broadening my experiences. And I suspect that most people would agree here.

If you are running your own business, as you seem to imply, then seek out other work. Start small and only just beyond your current area of knowledge. Expect to make less money in other work in your first dozen jobs. Both your knowledge and your work flow will hamper your productivity. But better to get paid to learn, even if it is at a third of your rate than to spend time with textbooks and online tutorials.

• Second to that has been Eng-Tips.

Eng-Tips exposes you to know problems and challenges that your engaged and enthusiastic peers are facing. Both listening and contributing help to build and cement your knowledge. For me at least, spending time on this forums has greatly broadened my knowledge and occasionally in some of the deep threads it deepens it.

• Courses etc: Including industry webinars, in-person courses, online YouTube structural blogs, textbooks and free online courses/tutorials.

All of these have provided some benefit roughly in the order listed. You have to be engaged and you might find that 90% of the presentation is telling you what you already know. But that last 10% adds to your knowledge or could trigger a whole chain of questions that cascade into significant growth.

• Never stop learning!

If you find yourself completely repeating the same things over and over again then you likely will start learning less. Have your engineer brain switch on 90% of the time. Sounds a bit intense when I say it outload but that has been what I've done over my relatively short career and I'm managing to charge ahead in leaps and bounds!


(One final comment.) You don't need to be a jack of all trades. Structural is a broad field. Personally I still struggle with residential both in experience, knowledge and workflow. I sometimes wonder if I should persist as I currently don't enjoy it. But for the moment it is still on my radar so I can keep my client base broad. I suspect I might never try to branch into concrete construction beyond foundations and retaining walls. But who knows what the future holds. My current area of expertise is keeping me busy, paid and challenged. I'm also getting referrals so my client base is broadening organically.

Thus, I haven't felt the need to broaden significantly outside what my existing work asks of me. (Residential for me is annoying and I don't chase the work, but I continue at it and hope I eventually improve my interest and productivity.)

Here are three Youtube channels that I occasionally view. They are all Australian based. All pitched at a strucutral engineering audience but generally for targeted toward those just beginning their career. I still find them a little useful as they a palatable and can cement knowledge or add a question to your current knowledge.


Please let me know if there are similar channels that you find productive.

Since opening my practice, I have been niching down and being hyper focused on my niche. I have found trying to become one of the most knowledgeable people in my niche has both helped me grow as an engineer and helped my business become more profitable.

Getting involved on committees (like TRB and AASHTO), reviewing papers for publication, and subscribing to every webinar related to my niche are ways I keep sharp. Even if I can nearly give 90% of the presentation myself, there is usually one gold nugget in there that makes sitting through the rest of the presentation worth it.

I have also found attending contractor trainings helpful. I am usually the lone engineer there, and I will have a dozen contractors approach me with questions that help me think outside of engineering numbers and look more at practical solutions a contractor can implement (in addition to gaining clients that are trying to broaden their knowledge as well).

LOTE said:

Since opening my practice, I have been niching down and being hyper focused on my niche.

Click to expand...

Well done. Being a niche provider in any field generally results in better income than a jack of all trades. In some cases it can make things boring and less diverse, but some niches have so much diversity that isn't a problem. Lack of breadth can give diversification risk, but overall I think it is worth it. Even if you only less than half a dozen regular clients then you can work to keep your books full.

I'm essentially niching down. I still take on roles outside my niche because I don't want to close doors YET. But in general I find them less interesting, less pay and more hassle.

Small firm, residential volume production, residential small and large custom, residential commercial, commercial, retail, light industrial, healthcare, municipal, education, wood, cfs, concrete, steel, masonry, shallow and deep foundations, oceanfront, tilt up, wood bridges, etc.

For understanding you can break it down in four categories, fundamentals, intricacies, implementation, and examples.

Fundamentals would be the classes like college.
-The best by far is Gregory Michaelson on youtube. He is a west virginia professor that webinars all his lectures of all his courses and he basically teaches all of them. https://www.youtube.com/@gregorymichaelson

-Second is the Testmasters PE course has videos that are 2-10 hours long covering all the fundamentals of each material in their structures videos with 1000s of pages of video accompanying pdf notes. https://www.testmasters.com/pe/civil-online-course

-Other calculation channels are

-This website has all their software as design calcs, first half of the pdfs are hand calcs, https://structurepoint.org/publication/design-examples.asp

Intricacies would be heavy in the weeds on conditions connections and etc

-CRSI Books are essential https://www.crsi.org/
- Heavy google searching and rabbit holing
- I find old books are alot better and simpler at describing information and read more narratively, scour google for old pdf books

- Youtube videos that show the animations of rebar detailing such as

-Youtube channels of all the governing bodies always have tons of webinars for accute topics like AWC

-This website is like those anaimation site, i cant read spanish but familiarity with how things are just laid out helps alot

-Websites that are just a data dump of details or cad drawings have extensive libraries of conditions


Implementation would be learning how the people actually build it and what typical designs and methodologies they are generally doing

-Contractor Youtube videos

And no better teacher than studying other peoples plans and details
-Scour google for structural permit plans pdfs of anything you can find

Very importantly sign up for chatgpt and grok and have endless conversations. you can dump all the code pdfs in there and have it synthesis and interpret and find a lot of stuff. You have vet it though and use your brain, trust but verify, but its really great at generating like custom Wikipedia pages of information for your specific questions and helping understanding concepts and helping you do calculations and finding google links to information. They're not gods yet but they are really powerful tools to compliment and speed up google rabbit holing.

Now I generally use chatgpt and grok, old engineering pdf books, like 1950s-90s, the detail and cad websites, and CRSI. But when i was learning concrete Gregory Michaelson, CRSI, the contractor youtube channels, rebar animation channels, structure point calculations, and searching for other peoples permit plans on google, and information through google images instead of web results.

In addition to all the great advice above, one thing that really helped me was doing actual construction/carpentry projects. If you ever have the chance to build a small deck, addition to a house, etc. I'd recommend it. Better yet, help somebody who is already an experienced builder. If you don't have time for this while running your engineering business, you can learn a lot from a good youtube video, as noted in the comment above.

I have a few questions that would help me better understand your current situation.

1. What is your 4-yr college degree? Ex: Civil (where structures are taught in many colleges), Mechanical, Building Science etc.
2. Did you get an advanced degree centered around structures? Due to Civil's wide range of specific areas of study in the Bachelors arena, at least a Master's is sometimes recommended for structures.
3. Do you have a PE license?
4. How long have you been working with structures since graduation?

Another concept to consider is that sometimes it is not what you know but how fast your mind processes it. You look at something, but walk away to another area before you mind processes what it saw a short period before. That can make you miss something important at times. Solely as an example, I have encountered a concept that buildings are built out of sticks, sheets and strings. If you play with small and weak examples of these components, your mind gets a lot faster at processing them. When you learn there is a finite list of things you can do to each component, and you learn that list of things, you get much faster and more importantly, more confident. The picture below is what I have used for sticks. It is a simple Staedler eraser with a rectangle drawn half way around it. I can do about 6 physical things to it, and therefore that is all a hurricane, earthquake, car collision or tree impact can do to it. The rectangle also solidifies how it distorts under each action.

A couple easy things I do to keep learning that don't take up much time (also do mostly residential)

• Look at other consultants' drawings to see how they do things - government projects are public or you can FOIA any address
• Subscribe to the Journal of Light Construction - lots of good articles written be PE's and tradesmen you can read at lunch

One thing that helped me is reviewing other people's work. Like being a second set of eyes on a friends project. Especially if it was a project that I had limited experience in. I've only done that a couple of times though. Call this a "peer review" if you want a formal name for it or if you want to charge a fee.

I've thought for awhile that it would have been good to spend some time in a plan check department to see what other engineers were doing and how they put together their calculations and drawings.

Also, I have found that attending meetings and luncheons from the local Structural Engineering society is a really good place to network with other structural engineers. Some of whom have relatively small practices. It helps to have people you can refer clients to for projects that aren't up your alley. Maybe even hire them to sub-contract that work for you while you review how they do their design and drawings.

Lots of good suggestions here. Just wanted to add one thing: follow what you're interested in. Maybe you're not interested in anything, but perhaps you're more drawn to seismic design than other things? Or concrete? Whatever it is, just read up on that. @Eng16080 mentioned carpentry, maybe do that if you like it. Every little bit helps become the next KootK. You mentioned a lack of time; there's no cure for that other than massive life changes, and it's very non-trivial. But if you're going to spend time learning, do it in the most enjoyable way possible.

Follow the path of least resistance. Sun Tzu said that water trickles down a rock through the easiest path.